Liber Subnotationum In Verba Juliani

MARIUS MERCATOR'S BOOK OF SUBANNOTATIONS ON THE WORDS OF JULIAN.

Preface,

WHICH HAS THE TITLE IN THE ANCIENT COPIES

A Commonitorium to the Reader against the Heresy of Pelagius and Coelestius, or also the Writings of Julian, by Marius Mercator, a Servant of Christ.

A question against the catholic faith, stirred up long ago among some of the Syrians, and especially in Cilicia by Theodore, once bishop of the town of Mopsuestia, is even now secretly gnawed away among a few of them, and is not openly brought forth; but by those who croak about it, it is meanwhile retained as if by catholics within the Churches. Namely, that the progenitors of the human race, Adam and Eve, were created mortal by God, and that none of their posterity were harmed by their transgression; but that they harmed only themselves, and made themselves guilty of the commandment before God, and no one else at all.

This foolish and no less hostile to the right faith question, under the blessed memory of Anastasius, the supreme pontiff of the Roman Church, a certain Rufinus, by nation a Syrian, first brought to Rome, and, as he was clever, protecting himself from its odium, and not daring to bring it forth himself, he then deceived Pelagius, a Briton by race and a monk, and thoroughly imbued and instructed him in the aforesaid impious vanity.

He [Baluz. Quique] soon dared to compose Commentaries on the Apostle Paul, and when he came to that very well-known passage of the Epistle to the Romans, where it is thus contained: "Therefore, as through one man sin entered into this world, and through sin death, and so it passed through to all men," etc. (Rom. 5:12), there he said that only those were guilty and held liable by that transgression who had chosen to imitate him in transgressing God's commandments: not all who are generated from his seed through the succession of generations; and from this point he argues more broadly about the subsequent passages of this Epistle, and declares that no man [Baluz. hominum] whatsoever was harmed through generation, nor is harmed by the transgression of Adam's sin; "But by imitation," he says, "because that first one sinned in the human race, and that one becomes guilty and liable who has imitated him by his own will, not by being born, but by sinning.

To this Pelagius was joined Coelestius, indeed noble by birth, and at that time a scholastic of the auditorium, but by a defect of nature a eunuch born from his mother's womb. This man, instructed by Pelagius, imbibed that most impious sense more purely, and with incredible loquacity made many participants and accomplices of this madness of his.

He dared openly and publicly to disseminate everywhere among the peoples the sense of the same through these verbal sentences, that is:

"Adam was made mortal, who, whether he sinned or did not sin, would have died."

"Because the sin of Adam injured him alone, and not the human race."

"Because infants who are born are in that state in which Adam was before the transgression."

"Because neither through the death of Adam does the whole race of men die, since neither through the resurrection of Christ does the whole race of men rise again."

"Because infants, even if they are not baptized, have eternal life.

These five chapters generate one most impious and nefarious opinion.

He added moreover: "that it is possible for a man to be without sin, and to keep the commandments of God easily, because before the coming of Christ there were men without sin."

"And that the Law leads to the kingdom of heaven in the same way as the Gospel."

These and other things of this kind pleased Julian himself and his other fellow soldiers. When these things, having been known and exposed, had been condemned by ecclesiastical authority along with the aforementioned persons, they were also defended by the same Julian with a multitude of books, and it pleased that he be counted third in condemnation with Pelagius and Coelestius.

Then, against his puerile audacities, Augustine, bishop of blessed memory, composed various books at various times, from all of which Julian selected one of the two first published to Valerius, to which he opposed four books of his own dedicated to Turbantius; but he boasts that he responded to one of the subsequent ones with eight final volumes sent to Florus, pretending to be completely ignorant of many other works of that holy man elaborated on this matter.

Having wandered with dreadful loquacity through these last eight, wishing to show himself eloquent and learned, after the countless reproaches of insults which he hurled at the aforementioned holy man, he shamelessly, nay impiously, dared to defend those things which we have earlier recorded that he learned from Pelagius and Coelestius to his own ruin; although, as in the previous four books, turning over the same things again and again, and finding no prudent way out, he filled his parchments or papers more with injuries and insults than with any reasoning of right faith. And when this question ought to have been treated with the utmost brevity and with the authority of the holy and divine Scriptures, he wrote for himself a great deal of distorted and entirely unnecessary material for loquacity, from which he might forge impiety and yet accomplish nothing. For he who labors at impiety accomplishes nothing.

The oft-mentioned holy bishop Augustine, however, in his six books, turned aside the first four of that man, and by attaching individual responses to the individual chapters of the eight later ones, he blunted, nay shattered, his vain and leaden daggers with the hammer of catholic truth.

When the work of each had come into our hands, I read it through more carefully and understood [Baluz. omits "read it through more carefully and understood"] that the entire sum of Julian's inept and more impious labor seems to be reduced to one depraved opinion: namely, that the transgression of Adam and Eve did not make them mortal, nor did their guilt pass to their descendants by original succession; but that one becomes guilty only by the imitation of those who have despised the divine commandments.

Therefore, as I have said, when I had read through this entire work more carefully, I also replied, to the best of the ability of our powers, by means of Subnotations appended to his books wherever opportunity required, so that the reader, after the trumpet of such a father and teacher, not disdaining to take up also our straw-like pipe, may understand with all brevity that Julian, in elaborating his very numerous books, expended empty labor full rather of boastfulness with the utmost impiety.

Indeed, since you also, venerable presbyter Pientius, have commanded that I ought to gather into one body those same Subnotationes which I have mentioned, I am not unaware, in obeying your orders, that we will incur the abuse of that accursed and unbridled tongue. But what can the barkings of a rabid dog, bound outside the Church [Baluz. adds: of God], accomplish? Let us glory that we are made participants and companions of such great men, and of such great ecclesiastical teachers shining throughout the whole world, against whom he hurls such unheard-of, such nefarious, and such obscene and atrocious curses.

I know well that he will also be angry with us concerning the order of the chapters, and, speaking more than is his wont, will stir up an empty clamor of words against us, accusing, of course, that our statements are in no order against him. We have, as we have already said, partly [Baluz.: sporadically] placed or applied our Subnotationes to his depraved opinions; we have composed no book against him.

Let him who will fill the capacious wax tablets with the Quadrivium, as Juvenal says (Satire 1); we, with the poverty of our talent, with the Christian faith as our foundation, far removed from the wise of this world, patiently endure both his reproaches along with our Fathers and teachers, and we refute, convict, and lament his deviations from Catholic truth by the divine words of our Scriptures, not by the art of sophisms.

HERE BEGINS THE BOOK.

CHAPTER ONE.

Now the words of Julian from his first book to Florus, from chapter 111, as follows:

"But let them run to him who cries out, 'My yoke is sweet, and my burden is light' (Matthew 11:30), who grants pardon for evil-doing out of his inestimable goodness, and who makes the innocence, which he creates good, better by renewing and adopting it."

To these words: Apart from the responses of the holy man, he indeed renews all by creating, but he does not renew all by regenerating, except only those of whom he himself says: "Unless one is born again of water and the Holy Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of heaven" (John 3:5). Or as the same says: "Unless one is born anew" (John 3:3). Hence you are suspected of fraud and deceit, because nowhere in your entire work did you see fit to make mention of renewal; but the word innovation always comes to your mind.

For it is certain that there is a great difference between innovation and renovation: for what is innovated, as is known to all, can be understood as that which never existed before and has newly come into being; but what is renovated is that which indeed already existed and had grown old; if it is renewed, it is called renovated.

But it cannot easily be proved that divine Scripture has used this expression, namely innovation; but it very frequently speaks of renovation.

Listen unwillingly to the Apostle Paul saying: "As the truth is in Jesus, put off, according to your former manner of life, the old man who is corrupted according to the desires of error; but be renewed in the sense of your mind, and put on the new man, who was created according to God in the righteousness of holiness and truth" (Ephesians 4:22). Likewise the same: "But when the kindness and humanity of our Savior God shone forth, not by works of righteousness which we performed, but according to his mercy he saved us through the bath of regeneration and renovation of the Holy Spirit, which he poured out most abundantly upon us in Christ" (Titus 3:5). Likewise the same: "Although our outer man is corrupted, yet the inner man is renewed from day to day" (2 Corinthians 4:12).

Then listen to who it is that are also adopted; listen, I say, not to me, but to the apostle Peter: "You," he says, "are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for adoption, that you may proclaim the powers of God, who called you from darkness into his wonderful light" (1 Peter 2:9). Do you hear what he says? Do you perceive what he proclaims? That those are adopted, evidently, so that they become the people of God for adoption, who are called from darkness into that wonderful light; whence it follows that unless someone has been called from darkness into that wonderful light, he is not a chosen race, not a royal priesthood, not a holy nation, and does not deserve to be a people for adoption.

Or will you perhaps say and command that only older people, who are called from darkness into that wonderful light as sinners, become the people of God; but that little children, placed in the light from their very birth and without experience of darkness, because, as you wish, they are only innovated, not renovated from any oldness of sin, are not among the people of God? Who among Christians would tolerate you speaking thus? Who would not shudder at you and flee from you writing such things as a deadly poison?

CHAPTER II

Likewise in Book II, Chapter XVI, the words of Julian.

"Truly, the feeble support of your opinion [Baluze: blind] multiplies sins, not diminishes them. Therefore, this itching of the wretched and of those spontaneously declining can bring no weight of argument against the very reason of truth. But because they assert that original sin is confirmed by certain passages of the Scriptures, and especially of the Apostle Paul, etc."

To these words. No one says that sin is natural, or that nature is sin, but that it is original; and that it is in nature, not outside nature; yet it could be called natural, not absurdly, however, or [Baluze: omits 'however, or'] abusively, yet not nature: for you, yourself deceived, deceive whom you can [Baluze adds: 'And yet']. Between original and natural there is some distance; and although what is natural can also be called original, yet what is original does not compel one to admit anything natural [Baluze: 'and natural']. And take an example: nature is every man, of any age, sex, and condition; but origin [Baluze: 'condition, origin, as'] is senator, curial, slave, colonus, and barbarian, which are not names of nature, but of the condition of origin. Thus we do not say that sin is nature or natural, but the cause of origin bound servilely through sin.

Although, as we have already said, it cannot exist outside the nature in which it is, unless you most insanely seek it outside this: or [Baluze omits *or*] it has of itself its own proper substance or nature, and, if you think so, it devours you into the Manichaeans, who impiously rave that the nature of evil holds and possesses a right of its own, its own status, and the primacy of origin.

CHAPTER III

Likewise in the same chapter a little below, the words of Julian:

“It has therefore been shown that nothing can be proved through the Holy Scriptures which justice cannot defend: because if the perfect form of justice is in the law of God, nothing through it can acquire the virtue of its adversary, that is, of injustice; and on this account, what reason argues, authority cannot claim.”

To these things: I would that you might prove by your reason the childbearing of a virgin, or conception without male mingling [Baluze: *permixtione*], [also that God was made man, and was led through the stages of age to the cross: which, because human reasoning does not confirm, the authority of the divine Scriptures claims through faith.

It is therefore laughable—nay, lamentable—in you, that you say: “What reason argues, authority cannot vindicate.” But who could count the so great and so frequent testimonies of the Scriptures against this wretched little declamation of yours, in which, because reason can investigate nothing, recourse is had to faith, so that eternal salvation is sought by its authority?

CHAPTER IV

Likewise, in the second book, chapter LVIII, the words of Julian:

“Or if, by chance, since your dogma cannot otherwise stand unless you answer that Adam conceived and gave birth from himself, there will be no doubt that the Apostle did not think this. You, however, have shown what you wished to happen to your own sex.”

To these things: “Blush, most unhappy man, at such scurrilous, or rather mime-like, obscenity of your tongue. You deserve to hear the vulgar acclamations: You alone are to be compared to one Philistion, one Lentulus of the Latins, one Marullus; for you alone have surpassed the talents of Martial and Petronius.

You are most truly the foulest stench of your fellow-regional of the Ampsanctine spring, you are the most noxious exhalation of the Lake Avernus, you are finally the pestilential breath of the Atabulus of your province, by which so many diseases you, swollen and half-mad, indeed utterly mad, have been inspired to belch forth, to vomit, to exhale these things; and would that you had exhaled your vital breath before you uttered such obscene and shameful things with full mouth!

What stage buffoon, what clown, what mummer would publicly utter these things with the license of professed indecency? Should chaste matrons, should honorable and refined men read you? But if they are mindful of honor and modesty, they will shudder and flee, as from a monstrous viper, as the hydra is said to have been.

Are you the son of Memoris, bishop of holy and blessed memory? Are you born from the womb of Juliana, a foremost woman, than whom you find nothing more honorable among the most reverend matrons? Far be it, far be it that I should dare to believe that of you. I would rather believe you to be the son of their slaves, and substituted for them, as has often been said and done, and as you rather approve by the great petulance and obscenity of your mouth; or if that is not so, there will be no doubt that they have degenerated in you, for anyone who knows the holy morals, the holy life, and the institution of those men, and has prudently examined your speech in these writings.

Indeed, after the death of holy men, you deservedly instructed your two sisters in such disciplines of your mouth. We know, we know what one of them cast in your teeth or reproached you with, when you rose up too harshly against the ruin of her modesty, and you, struck dumb, immediately dared not inflict any further annoyances of your censure upon her grief.

CHAPTER V.

Likewise, in the same book, chapter LIX, the words of Julian:

"For it is not said, 'There will be two men in one man,' but 'There will be two in one flesh' (Gen. 2:14); by which term of union that pleasure of those coming together and that lust, which, affecting the sense, prostrates the limbs, and, as that prudent man understood, yearns to make one flesh, is taught to have been instituted by God and inserted into bodies before sin."

To these things: You speak elegantly, like a buffoon, in your usual manner, and in the manner in which you defiled the theater of Arbiter and Valerius. It is established that in those progenitors of the human race there was a lust implanted in their nature, which indeed the divine Scriptures are accustomed to call not, as you wish, "lust," but "carnal concupiscence," concerning which they would fulfill that: "Increase and multiply, and fill the earth" (Gen. 1:28). And that: "He will cleave to his wife, and they will be two in one flesh" (Gen. 2:25). But if they had kept the divine command, there would not have been for them an immodest goad, a hostile and importunate instigator.

[institatrix], when her work is not sought, as she now is, dragging by her own force, and often casting down great vessels from the citadel of chastity. Therefore, if she is not such—as indeed she is not—as she had been divinely given for the sole cause of offspring by nature, she is corrupted; by this vice of hers, when she gives birth, what is born from vice is corrupted, and hence it stands in need of Christ as physician and restorer.

CHAPTER VI.

Again, in the same book, chapter 63, the words of Julian:

“For he certainly did not say that sin passed through, but death; death, indeed, inflicted by the severity of judgment, the avenger of transgression; pursuing not the seeds of bodies, but the vices of morals.”

To these words. Most reckless one, you have struck yourself with your own dagger: for you wish that not sin, but death, passes through the seeds, which death you nevertheless call “inflicted by the severity of judgment, the avenger of transgression.” Let it therefore be referred back to you from your own statement. What is this to posterity, who are all altogether dead, are dying, and will die, by that death which has passed through all men, and is the avenger of transgression, as you say? For that other point is laughable, that you say death—which you have declared to be the punishment of sin—alone passed into the race, without that which was the cause of such a great evil. Behold the excellent defender of the just judgment of God, who transmits the punishment of the progenitor to posterity, while they do not have the cause of his punishment!

It pleases you, however, that you subjoin: “Not pursuing the seeds of bodies, but the vices of character.” As if you command rather than teach that no one is dead, nor dies, nor will die, unless he has been an imitator of Adam’s transgression. Are you not ashamed of such vanity? Was there then no one, or is there, or will there be, at least according to the definition of your master Pelagius, which has been defended by you in so many books, whereby you both decree, “that a man can be without sin, and easily keep the commandments of God”? So, as we were saying, either according to yourselves, was there no one throughout so many centuries, who, found alien to this imitation of yours, would not deserve to incur in himself this penalty of Adam, which you call “the avenger of transgression, and which is ordered to pursue not the seeds, but the vices of character”? And certainly those whom you say “can be without sin, and easily keep the commandments of God,” ought to be without vices. Finally, so many thousands of infants, according to you, are born without any vice, have been born, and will be born. Why, therefore, are they punished by this death, which was inflicted by the severity of judgment as the avenger of transgression, which neither followed from their own cause, nor, as you say, passed into any of them?

Here from your hands, so to speak, fell that notable definition of your fellow student Coelestius: “That the sin of Adam harmed only himself, and not the human race.” This is the same Coelestius who is one of those concerning whom, in the first book of your work on the four [letters] to Turbantius, you say this: “The teachers of our time, most blessed brother Turbantius, and the authors of the nefarious sedition which still rages, have decreed to reach, through the ruin of the whole Church, the insults and destruction of men whose holy zeal burns them, not understanding how much honor they have conferred upon those whose glory they have shown, unless it could be uprooted together with the Catholic religion.” Have you so forgotten friendship? Have you so been accustomed to defend? Or do you now yourself need a patron? And have those who had prepared you as their defender been deceived?

And let these things have been said by me, as if I had not understood you to be too clever and eloquent, which you will boast without any doubt; but if you persuade yourself of this, you will greatly deceive yourself. For I have understood you, and I know what you most ineptly think against the tenacious faith of the right, and I hold in memory with what verbal ambiguities you now use here, and if we are allowed a little, we will prove these things.

You are abusing, of course, the simplicity of Christians who happen to read these books of yours: those are your words, to be sure, “But into all men it is not sin that has passed, but death, inflicted indeed by the severity of judgment, the avenger of transgression.” Here, here let me detain you a little; here let me usefully spend some time with you; I ask, if you speak simply and not in a dilemma, like Loxias to Croesus and Pyrrhus (for one and the same spirit of error [Baluz. one and you now in error spirit] speaks), how are you not also a traducian, as you like, and as you are still permitted, to call Catholic Christians? For not even death itself, which you grant, comes or will come otherwise, as even you agree, except by way of transmission or tradux, which you also wish to be a punishment without the merit of punishment.

To escape these straits, therefore, which you, more loquacious than eloquent, have made for yourself, you reply in what follows and argue that you spoke there about that death with which Adam was punished after the transgression, which does not destroy bodies, but which, through crimes and contempt of God, occurs in the soul and is eternal? Indeed, it drags to eternal punishment, which even Sacred Scripture signifies: “A widow,” it says, “who lives in delights, is dead” (1 Tim. 5:6). And in the Gospel: “Let the dead bury their dead” (Matt. 8:22; Luke 9:60).

And this such thing, you will say, I said passed, and passes into the descendants of Adam, not all men universally, but only those who are imitators of his transgression, forgetful of the divine commandments, just as he was. Moreover, that thing, you will say, which is the dissolution of the body, or the separation of the soul from the body, would have been in Adam, even if he had not sinned.

Hence those excellent definitions of your fellow soldier and fellow student Coelestius, and of your common master Pelagius, which have long since been condemned, along with their persons, by ecclesiastical authority throughout the whole world: "Adam was made mortal, who, whether he sinned or did not sin, would die; and that the sin of Adam injured only himself, and not the human race; and that infants are in that state in which Adam was before the transgression."

Hence also that last thing arose among you, which you did not fear to set in motion to your own evil: "Infants, even if they die unbaptized, have eternal life." And that more than sacrilegious statement: "Neither does the whole human race die through the death of Adam, because neither does the whole human race rise again through the resurrection of Christ.

These, indeed, are the magnificent teachings of your school, these the dogmas of Christian erudition, as you call them, but we Christians do not call them dogmas of truth.

"To the people with trumpery. I know you inside and out, and to the skin." (Persius, Satire 3.) What good does it do you, as the same poet says, "to keep a cunning fox in your fickle breast"? (Idem, Satire 5.)

I, for my part, will surely drag you from your most twisted and foul pits, by diligent investigation, into the light, to be exposed to Christian peoples.

Now hear, both you and those who have deigned to read me and you, what you yourself once declared against this most impious, most depraved, most shameless, most petulant opinion of yours, namely in your letter which you at that time dared to send to the apostolic see, when you shunned the assembly with the whole Church throughout the world to condemn Pelagius and Coelestius, and which, before it came into the hands of the bishop of that holy Roman Church, was, through your agency, circulated by some whom you had deceived throughout almost all Italy, and, as if it were something great, is known to have been insinuated into the ears of many. For there, among other things, you speak thus: "Who, therefore, is the assertor that neither through the death of Adam does the whole human race die, nor through the resurrection of Christ does the whole human race rise again, who thinks against the Apostle saying: 'Just as in Adam all die, so in Christ all are made alive' (1 Cor. 15:22).

Here with what fraud, and with what deceit, you say and think that “all” means—and we know and hold this—namely, not absolutely all men, that is, the whole human race, but those who have wished to be imitators of Adam; and through the resurrection of Christ, which that Apostle spoke of, that all will rise again, you likewise necessarily say, without doubt, that not the whole human race without exception will rise, but only the just and holy, who have imitated the justice and holiness of Christ; whereas it is established that absolutely all will rise through Christ, although some to the kingdom, others to judgment. And you add: “Rightly, therefore, is he condemned who contradicts this sentence, which says, ‘Through man came death, and through man the resurrection of the dead’ (1 Cor. 15:21)”; likewise: “That the sin of Adam harmed him alone, and not the human race: and this opinion, you say, is justly refuted by us; for it must be believed that it harmed not only him, but the human race.

And here what you are doing—safe, as you think, in your most depraved and twisted opinion—you could not hide from us: because these very ones, as you wish to teach, although few in comparison with the whole race, are the human race. Likewise: “That infants,” you say, “are in the state in which Adam was before the transgression, I count,” you say, “among undisciplined questions. For those who are born today are not in every respect in the state in which Adam was before sin, although it cannot be denied that they [Baluz. those] are the work of God, just as he was.”

What state you mean and think here—safe, as you suppose, in your opinion—we know very well: not, of course, that of the soul before sin, but of smallness and littleness, in which infants are born. Remember, you have said nothing here about unbaptized little ones, if they have been overtaken by death, that they have eternal life, which is utterly false: because Christ does not will this, nor has he willed it, as your most reckless temerity commands and teaches. Likewise you subjoin: “Adam was also made mortal, who whether he sinned or did not sin, would have died [Baluz. would have been about to die]”; you said this too is not supported by reason. “For it is to be believed,” you say, “that he was indeed made immortal, but that if he had not sinned, through the taste of the tree of life he could have obtained the power of immortality”; therefore it is badly said, “whether he sinned or did not sin, he would have died.

You have falsely accused me to you, lest anyone, or you yourself, should say that you did not later perceive these definitions to be settled. Hear again what is contained in your own words in your book, which we are discussing.

CHAPTER VII.

Again, from the same book, chapter 66, the words of Julian.

“Therefore, according to the Apostle, sin entered through one man, and through sin death, because the world beheld him both guilty and subject to the perpetual condemnation of death.” Certainly, you were soon saying something else, and denying that sin entered this world through that one man, whereas now you confess that it entered. “But into all men death passed through, because one form of judgment seized all the transgressors of the remaining age. Yet this death is not permitted to rage against the saints, nor against any innocents, but it invades only those whom it sees have emulated the transgression: which transgression, although it did not become natural, was nevertheless a form of sin; and on this account, although it does not burden the newborn, it nevertheless accuses the imitators. But judicial death passes into that in which all have sinned, but by free will.

To these points: If that death with which Adam was punished is judicial, and it is the same death that passed and passes to his descendants—not, as you claim, to absolutely everyone, but only to his imitators—what or what kind will that other death be which separates the soul from the body? Here you are cornered: "It is natural," you will say, "because Adam, whether he had sinned or not, would have died." Behold a Christian pedigree! Behold an ancient ecclesiastical tradition! But you see, of course, how you tear yourself apart, contrary to yourself in your own statements, like a viper, while you waste your empty effort with the rattles of words more than with any declamations.

I would, however, like to ask you more closely what you think about death of any kind, since you allow at least one of them to pass. I would therefore have you tell me what death is, which in your judgment passes. Is it a substance or a nature, or some accidental thing? For we remember the time when, present in the city of Rome, with the leaders of this most insane error of yours, you were assailing the Church among some of the simpler folk, how you used to ask: "What is sin," you would say, "is it something evil, or something good?" "Evil, of course," was the answer given to you. To this you would add: "Is God the author and maker of this evil?" "Far be it, far be it," was the cry raised to you, "how far removed is that madness.

Not even the most impious Manichaeus dared to profess this, who neither thinks nor declares God to be the author of evil; but he impiously insists that evil has from eternity its own principle, its own essence, and its own nature: whereupon you then used to say that it must be asked, “whether sin is a substance, or a nature, or some accidental thing.” When Christian simplicity hesitated a little at this, you would argue as follows: “sin can in no way be a substance or a nature, because then, you said, it would have God as its maker and author; for there is no nature which God did not create. But since it has been established above that God is not the author of evil, sin is therefore not a substance or a nature, which has been shown most clearly to be evil; and because it is not a substance, you say, it cannot by any right or reason be believed to pass into a substance or nature, which man is”; and you concluded: “therefore it is wrongly and foolishly believed that sin is transmitted from Adam.

As I was saying above, allow me also to question you along this path and with the same lines of argument, so that you may teach us by your response. Death—at least that death which pertains to the soul and is eternal, which the transgressor Adam incurred and transmitted to his descendants, which you define as passing only to a few imitators, not to all men generally, as the Apostle says, but to a very few (for of the other death, which separates the soul from the body, you make no mention)—is it some substance or nature, or is it a certain accident of substance? If you still have any light in you, you will answer and say that it has befallen the nature of substance, and that what was given as a penalty to the first transgressor, and thereafter to the human race, cannot be called a substance; and you will say that no prudent person has called a penalty a substance or a nature. Whereupon you are immediately to be caught in your own nets. By no means can that judicial death, which because it is penal is no substance—which you transmit to at least the imitators of Adam—ever be shown to pass from substance to substance, or from nature to nature, which is what man is.

Do you see, outstanding teacher of the lost and dialectical disputant, do you see where you have fallen? Do you now at least perceive how far you have strayed from the path of truth? But for the present, if you have any remnant of shame, let these things suffice for you. If, however, God grants the means of life, and allows time for reviewing these excellent books and for rereading that most wise letter of yours, when God wills, we shall answer you again. In the meantime, let us also bring forward other statements of yours, which we shun with great abhorrence.

CHAPTER VIII.

Likewise from the third book of the four published to Turbantius, near the beginning of the third chapter, the words of Julian.

"We say that the grace of baptism is not to be changed on account of causes, because it dispenses its own gifts according to the capacity of those approaching; and therefore Christ, who is the redeemer of his own work, increases benefits to his image with continuous generosity, and makes those whom he had made good by creating, better by renewing and adopting.

I would first have you teach and prove: from what source did those little ones, whom you admit are the work of God and deny are guilty, acquire the captivity that they need a redeemer? For no one offers the price of redemption importunely on behalf of a free person. And from what antiquity are they to be renewed, or, as you wish, innovated, these whom you say are the image of God, if they are not, as you think, disfigured by the old foulness of sin from the progenitor Adam?

But I will press you more closely on this point concerning the baptism of infants, so that I may convict you, by your own definitions, of actually believing that they have no need of it, and of holding that they ought to be baptized only in word, for the sake of deceiving the simple, while in reality, through the opinions of your disputations, you deny it. For those who, according to you, have an immaculate state of birth, from what are they to be cleansed when they are washed? And since they are born, as you wish, subject to no guilt of their origin, from what are they to be freed, so that Christ may truly and properly be for them also Jesus, which in Latin speech is rendered as "Savior"? And those who contract no defect from their generation, why are they to be regenerated?

Finally—passing over countless points for now—this must be said against you: if, as you claim, little ones at their birth have obtained that state of innocence and purity which Adam had before sin, and if, as you determine, no stain from that same progenitor has bespattered them, no contagion has defiled them; if, as they grow (with free choice of the will, which is in the nature until the very end of life), they have never fallen from the goods inborn or congenital to them, what need did they have of Christ’s baptism?

Or perhaps you will say: for the sake of the kingdom of heaven, and for adoption as sons? For why would such a state, and such great sanctity of life later acquired by their own acts of preserved nature, not admit them to that kingdom, or adopt them as sons? But, as from some sacristan and ever-watchful guardian, they hear the intruders: “Unless one is reborn from water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God” (John 3:6).

But let us consider baptism itself—of what power it is, and how many and how great are its strengths and the causes of its effects. The apostle Paul says of it: Who redeemed us, he saved us through the washing of regeneration and renewal (Titus 3:5). Therefore it is both salvation, and redemption, and renewal. Will there be no punishment, then, for unbaptized little ones—to lack salvation, redemption, renewal, and finally not to enter into the kingdom of heaven (John 3:6), not to be plucked from the power of darkness and transferred into the kingdom of the Son of God's love (Colossians 1:13), not to eat the flesh of the Lord and drink his blood (John 6:54)? Concerning this sacrament the voice of the Savior is: Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you will not have life in yourselves (John 6:54); which certainly, without any evasion, no one takes up without baptism, nor becomes a partaker of that sacrament.

Do you command, as you usually do, that even here by evasion he should say that this statement about taking the flesh and blood of the Lord is not general but special—that is, directed to those in whose presence he was then speaking? Let the Christians hear, let them hear, if you rush forward to this, and let them report to you in this manner the Lord's Supper, in which, reclining with only the apostles, he established the sacraments of his own body and blood to be observed. Do you declare that the command was for them alone, and pertains to no one else—neither to anyone who was not present at that supper then, nor to us all, their descendants? Do you not see by what snares, by what straits you are choked, when you deny that the bond of origin—by which Christ absolved the entire human race, every age, unless through these sacraments, in which the washing of regeneration and renewal comes first—is a great evil, a great punishment, and an inevitable damnation?

Having gathered these points against such great and manifest impious audacity of yours, it is clear that you, as a follower of Coelestius, who defined that "infants, even unbaptized, have eternal life," deny that little children ought to be baptized; but, as I have already said, you only mock this with words, while in meaning you hold the open impiety shared with pagans and Jews.

That we may prove this clearer than light, hear from what names, with their proper causes, which Christ conferred upon the human race in his benefits, you make little children aliens, and the Lord Christ Jesus himself owing them none of these, and having bestowed nothing upon them.

Surely, whether you wish it or not, Christ is the giver of life: here I will ask, of both soul and body? You, though unwilling, will admit it. I will repeat the question, of every age entirely? You will answer, of all. I will press more closely, and of little children? You will say, even so; but listen, I will tell you in what way he gives life, and, so to speak, by what art. "But God," says his herald and the chosen vessel, the apostle Paul, "who is rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us in Christ, by whose grace we have been saved" (Eph. 2:4). What do you think now? Has he counted and named little children as well? Or are they outside that compassion and love, because they have not died to sins, and they await you, a most vain gatekeeper, so that you may then admit them to mercy to be given life, when he has ceased to have mercy on sinners, so that he may give them life in a different way than others?

But let us pass from here, for the sake of brevity, to another term, namely "Savior." Concerning the Savior it is written in the Gospel thus: "Today a Savior has been born to you in the city of David" (Luke 2:11). Hence also in the Greek tongue he is properly called Jesus, and in the passage about Zacchaeus: "Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham" (Luke 19:9). Likewise: "The Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost," he says (ibid., 10). You, without doubt, since you declare that the flocks of little ones have not perished, [hold that] they are not saved, not sought for. Hear this, both concerning the lost sheep, sought and found, and concerning the drachma or the bundle that had perished (Luke 15). Likewise the apostle Paul: "This is a trustworthy saying, and worthy of all acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the first" (1 Tim 1:15). Hence do you, excellent teacher, remove the crowds of little ones, so that they do not run to this one who came to save what had perished (Luke 19:9); who did not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance (Luke 5:32); who baptizes for the remission of sins (Acts 2:38); who seeks the sheep that went astray (Luke 15:4); who [seeks] the drachma (ibid., 8), that is, the bundle that had perished; who died for sinners (1 Cor 5:3); who shed his blood for the remission of sins (Eph 1:7); who was handed over for the sins of men (Rom 4:25); who was wounded for our iniquities (Isa

who carried our sins in his body on the tree (1 Peter 2:24); who was offered as a sheep for slaughter for our sins (Isaiah 53:7); who wiped out the handwriting of debts (Colossians 2:14); who, according to the apostle Peter, suffered, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God (1 Peter 3:18); whose blood, according to John the evangelist, cleanses us from every offense (1 John 1:7); who, when we were weak in due time, died for the ungodly, as the apostle Paul says (Romans 5:6); who in the likeness of sinful flesh condemned sin in the flesh, as the same Paul is witness (Romans 8:3); who reconciled us from offense to God the Father, as the same Apostle again says (Romans 4:10); who gave himself for our sins, and one died for all, that he might deliver us from the present evil age (Galatians 1:4). And what end will there be, if we recount here all the things from which this distinguished teacher drives away an innumerable multitude of little children?

The apostle John says this about what illuminates us: If we walk in the light, as he himself is in the light, we will have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son will cleanse us from every sin (1 John 1:7). I ask, with what ears, with what face do you hear that we are cleansed by the blood of Jesus the Son of God from every sin, when you, as you say, bar infants who have no sin from this most sacred blood?

Hear that he is the Redeemer: The apostle says, Giving thanks to God the Father, who has made us fit for a share of the lot of the saints in the light, who rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins (Colossians 1:13). Do you think you will awake, weighed down by such a sleep, and hear what he says, and feel with what shame you said of little children, “Christ, who is the redeemer of his own work,” when this great herald says that those who have been, or are being, drawn out of the power of darkness and transferred into the kingdom of the beloved Son of God are redeemed and are being redeemed, and that the gift of redemption is not obtained except with the forgiveness of sins? Hear further, whether you will or not, and against your will: Who gave himself that he might redeem us from all iniquity and cleanse for himself a people zealous for good works (Titus 2:14).

Away with infants, then, from this place, since they are not redeemed or cleansed from the iniquity that they do not have; since, as you say, they have nothing from which they need to be cleansed, so that they may be joined to the people of God, who are zealous for good works! And indeed in this chapter concerning redemption, if we pursue everything so that we can expose the chasm of your utterly empty impiety, when will we finish? Hence I judge it more fitting, for the sake of avoiding prolixity, to gather as many as we can of the names of the Savior's benefits, and from the fewer of them to add rare and few testimonies of Scripture, from which your impiety tries to exclude infants, so that it may be clear to all how harmful you are in each case, and how you are an enemy of sound and right faith.

That Christ is the liberator, that he is the mediator, that he is the propitiation—I would like you to state the reason for his mediation on behalf of a little child, who you deny has any reason for offense; you would also state the approach of propitiation for one whom you determine has no guilt for which God might be propitiated by its remission.

That he is a physician, who is necessary only for the sick (Mark 2:17).

That he is a reconciler, hear Paul saying: For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved in his life (Rom. 5:10). Likewise the same: God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not reckoning to them their sins (2 Cor. 5:19). And [Baluzius adds: after a little] the same himself: Not only so, but we also glory in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation (Rom. 5:11). With what face do you refuse that little children belong to this reconciliation?

That he is a circumciser, you will hear in what follows. Meanwhile, give this infant the foreskin which you deny he has, so that he may be circumcised.

That he is a shepherd, but receives no sheep into his fold which he has not first circumcised: and he circumcises this one certainly, which is dead in trespasses [Baluzius: beloved] and the foreskin of his flesh, who also came to the lost sheep (Col. 2:15; Matt. 15:24).

That he is merciful and compassionate, hear the apostle Paul: We also were, he says, children of wrath, even as the rest. But God, who is rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, made us alive together with Christ (Eph. 2:4).

That he is a testator, that he is a consoler, that he is an advocate, that he is one who adopts or an adopter. Who adopts whom, and what sort of persons—since you have grown far too deaf—let the catholic Christians hear the apostle Peter saying: But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for adoption, that you may declare the virtues of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light (1 Pet. 2:9).

That he is a regenerator, but he regenerates no one except the one who contracted a defect in his first origin: for others, who are well disposed, and, as pleases you, in the generation which exists as a just cause of regeneration? Or what is there that ought to be emended or corrected in that, except what is perhaps depraved?

That he justifies or is a justifier, hear the apostle Paul: As the truth is in Jesus, to put off the old man according to your former manner of life, which is corrupted according to the desires of error. But be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new man, who was created according to God in righteousness and holiness of truth (Eph. 4:23). Those whom you declare to have been clothed with no oldness—what will they do if they listen to you? They will not come to the renewer, they will not be clothed with him, having put off the oldness, so that they may be renewed in the spirit of their mind.

That those who have been baptized are transferred from darkness into the kingdom, hear the apostle Paul: Giving thanks, he says, to God and the Father, who made us fit for a share of the holy lot in the light, who rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son of his love, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins (Col. 1:13). I ask, with what mouth—or rather, with what impudence—did these things seem to you to be considered otherwise, so that you would not be pressed by the truth of such great light and the weight of Christian reasoning? You will therefore separate even from this chapter the little children, lest the innocent, according to you, and those who are established in the light by the merit of innocence, be seen to be drawn out of the power of darkness.

But, most senseless of mortals, they are not transferred into the kingdom of the Son of God's love in any other way, nor any sooner, unless they have first been drawn out from the power of darkness, and unless they have obtained redemption, that is, the forgiveness of sins. And note here the redemption which you too will mention and concede, but some fabricated thing, I know not what; but the other redemption which the Apostle says is nothing in the first place except the forgiveness of sins.

That he is a cleanser or expiator, hear John the Baptist: Behold the Lamb of God, behold he who takes away the sins of the world (John 1:29). What here, I ask, does this Lamb signify, except the victim for sins, who for his own certainly—those whom he expiates when he was offered and is daily offered in his sacraments—bestows forgiveness of past and present sins?

Do you therefore command that little children, liable in no sin, say to themselves that this victim profited them not at all, which is known to have been slain only for sins, or for sinners? Indeed you ought to hear what the herald of this victim proclaims in the following passages of the epistle (1 John 5:7): And the blood of Jesus the Son of God has cleansed us from every offense. Likewise Paul: Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and cleanse for himself a people zealous of good works (Titus 1:24). Where will you turn? Where will you flee, to avoid these snares?

Do you not see, most shameless one, that the blood of this victim is the cleansing of sins, and also the redemption from all iniquity, through which he might prepare for himself a people zealous for good works? And you, with an iron brow and a heart of stone, separate little children from the people of God, who, cleansed and redeemed, rejoices in so many and such great divine rewards.

Hear the apostle Paul concerning the one who blots out the handwriting: And you, when you were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, he made alive together with him, forgiving the handwriting that was against you, in the decrees of judgments, which was contrary to you, taking it away from the midst, and nailing it to the cross, stripping off the flesh, he led principalities and powers in triumph confidently, triumphing over them in himself (Col. 2:14). What will you assert here, excellent teacher? Does he blot out the handwriting of little children also in baptism? Or, having no handwriting, neither their own nor their father's, do you not care to admit them to this grace of the giver? Let catholic Christians hear here what you think, and what they ought to understand you to be, I leave to their own judgment.

That Christ is life, hear the apostle John: And this is the testimony: that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son does not have life (1 John 5:11), but the judgment of God remains upon him (John 3:36). Come now, reckless one! Grant that a little child may have this life without baptism. You are stuck here, I believe, and by sticking fast in the same mud you pay off the interest. If, then, he does not have life without this sacrament, the judgment of God remains upon him. Whence this is so, I do not ask; let the prudence of readers understand it.

The Lord, refreshing and relieving this in the Gospel, says: Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will refresh you: take my yoke upon you, and learn from me that I am gentle and humble of heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light (Matthew 11:28). Will there be any doubt here either, that no one hastens to that preacher except the one who, burdened with some load, is worn out by toil, so that, having laid it down, being gentle and humble of heart, he may take up his light yoke upon himself? And what is this other than, as we have said, the burden of sins? Because, as pleases you, this burden is none at all for little children, let them not hear this preacher (whom the Greeks call Ecclesiastes), and let them not care to understand about taking up his gentle and light yoke, since they had no burden to lay down.

Is it not a crime that Christians hear these things? And that you still allow him to prattle on through the negligence of the priests—is that not the ultimate punishment?

CHAPTER IX.

A reconsideration of the question concerning death entering the world through sin.

You have, I believe, what may touch and sting you; but if you are stirred up again, I know that, by God's gift, you will be bound more tightly so that you may not stir yourself further.

Nevertheless, with the necessary consideration, I will return to the earlier points, examining more closely what you think about the punishment that the transgression of our first parents deserved by divine judgment; and bringing you back to this question, I will again lay bare your abyss. Once this is unraveled, when the authority of the divine Scriptures presses upon your jaws, you will know that you have supplied weapons to the pagans and the Jews in all your books—but weapons of lead, surely; for they could have no strength to overthrow the faith in Christ.

But let us again see what these things are, or of what sort, in which—I ask—what is this inexplicable error of a labyrinth? What are these insoluble problems of the Theban monster? In your letter, which, as we have mentioned, was sent to Pope Zosimus of holy memory, it displeases you, and you condemn the one who holds that Adam was made mortal, and would have died whether he sinned or did not sin.

And you say that this too is not supported by reason; for I believe, you say, that he was made immortal, but that if he had not sinned, he could have attained the power of immortality through tasting the tree of life. You add also that he is rightly to be condemned who contradicts the Apostle preaching and saying: As in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive (1 Cor 15:22). And presently you subjoin this other testimony: By a man came death, and by a man the resurrection of the dead (ibid.). When the simple Christian hears these things, believing that nothing deceitful, nothing of fallacy is being brought forward, in the manner in which the Church is accustomed to be taught by the apostles, he judges him the best and his own teacher, and, intent on the rest of the same Apostle's words, which you pursue in this matter, to hear them, he decides. But you, having one thing shut up in your heart and another ready on your tongue, a new and distinguished disputant, now bring this forward in this Work of yours, elaborated after so long a time in Cilicia.

Therefore, by a necessary repetition of the chapter, let us again scrutinize what new and unheard-of thing you have brought from there, after traversing the sea and surveying the East: "There entered, then," you say, "according to the Apostle, through one man sin into this world, and through sin death, since the world looked upon him both as guilty and as destined for the damnation of perpetual death." And you add: "But death alone passed through unto all men, because one form of judgment comprehended all transgressors, even those of the remaining age; which death, however, is not permitted to rage against the saints, nor against any innocent persons, but, you say, it pervades only those whom it has seen to have emulated the transgression: which transgression, although it was not made natural, was nevertheless a form of sin; and for this reason, although it does not weigh upon those being born, it nevertheless accuses those who imitate it: but the judicial death passed through unto that which all have sinned, yet by free will." Are these senses of doctrine hence more probable and more refined? But is the loss of those definitions made in former times? Or is there some deep hidden thing in you, which perhaps must be expounded to us by the Brachmans, the Gymnosophists, or the Hyperboreans, or whatever other nations are wiser than the known world?

Let us come, then, to that more recent definition, by which it pleased you that sin entered through one man, and death through sin; but that death alone passed through into all men. I ask you, do not abuse the slowness or the dullness of my wit: you say that two things entered, sin and death; but you wish that death alone passed through into men—yet not absolutely all men—foolishly, because if sin entered and did not pass through, where did what entered remain? I suppose it must be waiting for its companion until it goes out, and that after some business has been completed. But if we are dealing seriously, and there is no laughing matter in so great a thing, according to yourself: if sin could enter, it passed through; but if it could not pass through, neither did it enter. Or did it enter in order to stand still? But if even to say this is absurd, it passed through—and where, except into all men, could it pass through? Then, how sin, as an imitative thing, as you please, has a passing through, and original sin does not, you will never be able to explain. These things cannot be read without laughter—nay, without tears—because you are to be wept over rather than laughed at by Christians. Therefore, as men read you—but Christians and prudent men—let us leave it to them to judge what they ought to think of your vanity.

For who could suspect you, in your previous opinion, of thinking anything other than all those who, while Pope Zosimus of holy memory presided, the priests of God condemned—Pelagius, Caelestius, and you—regarding all those chapters about Adam which were formerly disapproved and condemned by you, and now, as though gathered up again and hidden away, have deserved to be received into your faith.

Then on this question—namely, of death—let us see what the universal Church (which in the Greek tongue we call catholic) says and thinks, and teaches her children: by which death she knows that Eve also, after the transgression, was punished. Was it that death which restores the soul to the body, and which we know and see to be common to the entire human race from that man? Or is it that death which is spoken of with respect to the soul, and is eternal, of which it is written: The widow who lives in pleasures is dead while she lives (1 Tim. 5:6); and again: Let the dead bury their dead (Matt. 8:22), and whatever else can be brought forward for this understanding? But there is no doubt that they were punished by both, and that Christ brought a remedy for both. For since through the washing of regeneration and renewal he forgives sins, and is going to bestow immortality through the resurrection of the flesh, which we now hold in hope through faith, at one time for all—it must be believed that the forefathers of the human race were condemned no otherwise than by a twofold death, and that both pass over into their offspring.

But because this most learned master thinks and tries to teach that this bodily death existed naturally for them, and is in like manner natural for us, and that it neither ever passed upon them through sin nor can pass through seed, let us see, as I said, what the apostle Paul in the meantime thought and preached concerning it. For writing to the Corinthians, when treating of the resurrection of the body—against which this death [Baluz.: of the body acts, to which, by contrast, this death is opposed], that is, the dissolution of the body, or the separation of the soul from it—he speaks thus at greater length: But I make known to you, brethren, the Gospel which I preached to you, which also you received, in which you are saved; by what reasoning I preached to you, if you hold it, unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you first of all what I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures (1 Cor. 15:1-3). Come now, speak out, say if you dare that the death of Christ, who died for our sins, does not pertain to the little ones whom you defend as being without sins, or that they are not baptized into the death of Christ. And because he was buried, he says, and because he rose again on the third day according to the Scriptures, and because he appeared to Cephas, and after these things to the eleven. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brethren at once, of whom many remain to this day, but some have also fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles.

Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me; for I am the least of the apostles, who am not worthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the Church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace in me was not in vain, but I labored more abundantly than all of them, yet not I, but the grace of God with me. Whether then it was I or they, so we preached, and so you believed; but if Christ is preached as having risen from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, neither has Christ risen; but if Christ has not risen, our preaching is in vain, and your faith is in vain; and we are found to be false witnesses of God, because we have testified against God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise. If the dead do not rise, neither has Christ risen; but if Christ has not risen, your faith is vain, and you are still in your sins; therefore those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in this life only we are hoping in Christ, we are more miserable than all men; but now Christ has risen from the dead

from the dead, the firstfruits of those who sleep; for since by a man came death, by a man also comes the resurrection of the dead; and as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive, but each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then those who are Christ's, who have believed in his coming; then comes the end, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father; for he must reign until he puts all his enemies under his feet; the last enemy to be destroyed is death (1 Cor. 15:4-26). Likewise the same apostle, a little later: Behold, I tell you a mystery: we shall all indeed rise, but we shall not all be changed. At the last trumpet—for it will sound—and the dead will rise incorruptible, and we shall be changed; for this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. And when this mortal has put on immortality, then the saying will come to pass that is written: Death is swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your sting? Where, O death, is your contention (Hos. 13:14)? Now the sting of the flesh is sin, and the power of sin is the law; but thanks be to God, who has given us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ (Ibid., 51-57).

Have you heard, most insane one, do you perceive—now at least—you of singular impudence and most rabid fury? "By a man," he says, "comes death." Tell us, what is this death that the preacher says passed through a man? Is it yours, or the one the Church knows has already been conquered by Christ's resurrection and is to be conquered in us also at the end? But, I warn you, lend your ear and hear what follows: "For as in Adam," he says, "all die, so all will be made alive in Christ." Who ever doubted that the Apostle here understood some other vivification than the resurrection of the flesh that will come upon all men? Do you therefore command that only a very few rise again, and that death be conquered in them alone and be to be conquered at the end—those who have imitated or were imitating the transgressing Adam, upon whom this death of yours (for it must always be called yours) could pass—and not absolutely all men who trace their origin from Adam and Eve, the first transgressors, of mortality—not innate to them but sought through sin? And what does the so prolix, yet sound and salutary, doctrine of words of so great a herald mean for himself in this matter, if you are to be heard as a new spirit—which God forbid? Nor will any access for slandering us lie open to you, as though we say and hold that an equal resurrection—that is, of one merit—is to be granted to all, because all, though with a different outcome, nevertheless die by one death.

Let us die], since the clear speech of the Apostle teaches us, saying: Each one in his own order. And again: We shall all indeed rise again, but we shall not all be changed.

Let the reader, I ask, review from the beginning our words spoken above against you, where we said that our advocates were punished by both deaths, and let him see what I meant concerning this chapter, and let him shut your jaws with that cornerstone, which is certainly placed for you as an offense and a rock of scandal.

Yet still hear what may stir you to greater rage against us and the Church of God: For whether we are beside ourselves, it is for God; or whether we are sober, it is for you. For the love of Christ urges us, judging this, that if one died for all, then all have died, and Christ died for all, that those who live may now no longer live for themselves, but for him who died and rose again for them, so that he may be Lord of both the living and the dead. Be silent: no one, except through Adam, has died, but as a penalty, nor will anyone die; no one, except through Christ, will rise again, but one to reign, another to pay eternal punishments: Each one, as the Scripture says, in his own order, provided that, as we have often said—and we cry out with the Apostle against you—no one at all of mankind in absolutely any age has died except Adam, and no one will be brought back to life in the flesh except Christ.

Remember also that we hold and have as certain in our faith, concerning the two deaths of which we spoke in the preceding place as best we could: the one, which is according to the soul, Christ did not have—which we pray that no one may say or think most insanely—because he was not born as all other men are, from carnal pleasure, but a new generation was in him from the immaculate virgin, before birth and after birth, without lust. Attend, reader. But the other, that is, the separation of the soul from the body, he voluntarily undertook, though not owed; for if he had not been killed by the crime of the Jews, it could have come about that, long-lived in old age—since this had once pleased him—he would freely undertake to die for us, that is, for our debt which we contracted in Adam, and for our own sins which we have added, though not owed. Although no Christian whatsoever ought to doubt that all the foretellings of the prophets concerning him, and the cross to be inflicted on him by the parricidal fury of the Jews, had to be fulfilled.

Now go to the gallows with that grandiloquence of your words, you fugitive; no one hears you barking madly, no one follows you as you wander from the Church, no one agrees with one so insane. We, together with the whole Church of God and with our fathers, the illustrious teachers of the Church, have sworn to this meaning of the divine Scriptures and to these words concerning mortality, which was given to the human race as a penalty from the transgression of our first parents, and runs through nature by seed, and will continue to run even to the end, until it is said with the blast of that divine trumpet: Death is swallowed up in victory; where is your sting, O death? where is your contention, O death? (Hos. 13:14).

With due reverence, of course, and the honor owed to the holy and blessed memory of Bishop Augustine, who drove you from the Church with his pastoral cudgel, routed you, and shattered you—let the reader know, or whoever wishes, that these things too have been set down or attached by me, after reading this entire work of yours, as we said before, here and there and wherever it seemed useful, from certain chapters of your fragments, in the codices I have read.

Nor should you laugh at the great brevity of this little work of ours, since you ought not to boast of so many books—books of a loathsome loquacity rather than of any matters at least worthy of consideration. Do not pretend ignorance on this point; for you know that in this question which is at issue between us—namely, concerning the mortality of the human race, which through the first transgressors of the divine command ran generally through the seeds, and runs, and will run even to the end—this question, which utterly consumes your whole case, must be fastened as to a most mighty stake. If a Christian and prudent reader perceives that this question has been extinguished among us—or rather in you—he will recognize that nothing, absolutely nothing further remains for you, which you should have muttered even against this same [work], or should now mutter; and he will judge that saying far more fittingly and aptly applies to you concerning your whole discourse, which you boast is the height of eloquence, than to him of whom it was said: "Enough of eloquence, too little of wisdom. A vast mind was coveting immoderate, incredible, excessively lofty things." But concerning your senses, by which you are lifted up, wandering and vain, a prudent man of another age will pronounce with his mouth, and will fit this saying everywhere: You have brought forth mountains, whence a ridiculous mouse would be born.